Tag: Apps

Android Now Lets You Edit Text Messages

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Hey u up? I miss u babbe.

That’s the kind of immediately regrettable text you’ll now be able to salvage on Android Messages. This week, Google announced a bunch of new features coming to its Android mobile platform, and perhaps most useful among them is the ability to edit messages after they’ve been sent.

The update is for Google’s default Messages app, and works pretty much the same way the edit option functions in other messaging apps like WhatsApp. Once a text is sent, tap and hold on the message, then when the menu pops up, tap Edit. There, you can fix your frightening textual faux pas and help to cultivate a world of clearer communication.

Courtesy of Google

There are a couple of caveats. You can only edit messages within 15 minutes after sending them (just like in WhatsApp) and once you do a small bit of fine print will appear by the timestamp saying that the message was edited. Of course, the recipient will still see all your embarrassing typos if they are prompt enough to view the message before you can change it.

The other Android updates Google announced this week include better smart home controls, the ability to switch between devices mid-call, and more WearOS controls for devices like Google’s Pixel Watch.

Here’s some other news from around the consumer tech world.

Car Thing Refunds

Spotify says it will refund any of its users who bought a Car Thing, the company’s first and only hardware device that was released in 2022. Spotify discontinued the Car Thing just a few months after its launch, and it announced this month that it would be disabling all the devices by the end of 2024. The company initially said it wouldn’t be offering replacements or refunds for the dashboard-mounted music streaming box, but after significant customer backlash, Spotify relented. Or at least has softened its stance, even though it hasn’t exactly guaranteed refunds for the $90 device. (Instead, the company says customers can contact customer service and request a refund.)

It’s not a great look for Spotify, which is now facing a class action lawsuit from Car Thing users who are frustrated the company decided to stop supporting the device entirely.

Amazon’s Drones Take Off

Amazon’s delivery drone program had all but crashed and burned in recent years, as it has struggled with slow or botched deliveries and an inability to convince the Federal Aviation Administration to let it expand. But the Everything Company’s drones may be able to find some new lift at last, as the company says it has successfully gotten FAA approval to fly some drones out of line of sight of the operator, which could significantly expand their operations.

Amazon’s quest for delivery dominance has caused it to make some questionable ethical decisions, like making it more complicated for users to opt out of Amazon Prime or making its employees work so hard they have to pee in bottles.

Even with this green light for takeoff some problems still exist that may keep the drones grounded, like the fact that there might not even be much customer interest in the program, or the fact that the drones struggle to fly on especially hot days.

Richard Mille Scores an Ace

The new new RM 27-05, a collaboration between Richard Mille and tennis star Rafa Nadal.

Photograph: Richard Mille

Let’s be honest, collaborations between watch brands and celebrities are usually pointless. But no such criticism can be aimed at what Richard Mille and Rafael Nadal have been doing for the last 14 years. The original RM 027, the pair’s collaboration that launched in 2010, started things off as they were destined to continue, showcasing increasingly audacious missions to go ever more lightweight, rugged, and just plain technically crazy. The RM 027 weighed less than 20 grams, then the RM 27-01 just 18.83 grams. In 2015 came a new case architecture. The 2017 RM 27-03 boasted 10,000 gs of shock resistance. Then, in 2020, the RM 27-04 punched this shock resistance up to 12,000 gs.

The new RM 27-05 continues the lightweight battle—remove the straps and it comes in at 11.5 grams. This is thanks in part to the monoblock case made of Carbon TPT B.4, a material previously used in Formula 1 race cars. Compared to normal Carbon TPT, B.4 is denser, the fibers are stiffer, and the resin is around 30 percent tougher. What does this mean? Thinner pieces can be machined, so you get weight reduction without losing rigidity. The manual movement inside has been shaved down to be lighter, too, and is 0.6 millimeters thinner.

Finally, to make sure all was well, the RM 27-05 underwent a series of tests no watch should be subjected to: vertical and horizontal shocks, and 300 g accelerations. Yes, it’s limited to 80 pieces, but when you consider each one costs $1,150,000, Richard Mille should recoup the considerable development costs.

WIRED’s Jeremy White contributed this writeup of the RM 27-05.

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Boone Ashworth

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June 1, 2024
The Rebirth of Queer Cruising Apps

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One night this past February, over drinks and moody bar lighting, Eric Green and his friends were swapping stories of their recent hookups when one mentioned they’d used the app Sniffies to have public sex. A 30-year-old tattoo artist who works in Bushwick, Brooklyn, Green identifies as a bottom, is a frequent user of dating apps, and has an active sex life—only, he’d never heard of Sniffies.

It wasn’t long after that night out, Green was overtaken by “complete and total horniness” while at home, and decided to sign up himself. When he opened the app he was reminded of Google Maps, only instead of restaurants and shopping recommendations, he was inundated with nudes and suggestions for the nearest pump-and-dump. “I expected it to be like Grindr and Jack’d, but after I checked it out I realized it was super accessible,” Green says, referencing two other popular queer hookup platforms. “More accessible than any other app.”

Access is Sniffies’ main selling point. A map-based cruising platform for men of all sexual identifications (gay, bi, DL, and straight-curious—yes, you read that right), Sniffies has become something like an adults-only Disneyland for queer men interested in sex-positive, no-strings-attached casual encounters. “We really focus on in-the-moment connections,” says Eli Martin, the company’s chief marketing officer and creative director. “On other apps, it’s not always clear what people’s intentions are—some people want to find a boyfriend, others just want to look around—but on Sniffies, we try to make it clear that people are fulfilling their sexual desires and fetishes.”

Sniffies is not your typical dating app, or a dating app at all, really. In lieu of the standard song and dance on Tinder or Bumble, where conversations are bogged down in endless chatter that often never lead to an IRL meeting, on Sniffies you can anonymously browse a map of men searching for sex with other men. Along with web-apps BKDR (short for backdoor), Motto, and Doublelist (think a more streamlined Craigslist personals), it has reignited an appeal in cruising culture that for so long had been taboo, even among certain queer circles. More recently, however, men cruising for sex with other men in public spaces, and the need to be discreet about doing so, was no longer seen as the polarizing issue it once was thanks to a wider acceptance of LGBTQ+ rights and the popularity of hookup apps, which facilitated all manner of connection.

“Destigmatizing casual sex has been our biggest hurdle in general,” says Martin. “It’s been ingrained in us to be monogamous, but we should have this sexual freedom. Cruising doesn’t have to be seedy or something that only happens in back alleys.” Thankfully, he says, that’s changing. “In the last couple of years, we’ve been able to enjoy it more without as much judgment, but it was still hard on day one, because I was like, how do we create an app that’s [not only cool] but going to continually push people to engage in?”

Launched in 2018, Sniffies was the brainchild of former Seattle-based architect Blake Gallagher. A problem-solver by nature, Gallagher was fascinated by the way urban environments influence sexual interactions. He wanted to better augment natural human connection in public spaces, and decided to implement a map feature and geolocation technology as the basis for Sniffies—tapping into what author Jack Parlett calls “the democratic potential of cruising.” Gallagher first tested his idea in Seattle and, with the help of his brother Grant, a programmer, slowly built Sniffies into what it is today—a “cruising app for the curious” with an increasing global reach.

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Jason Parham

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May 27, 2024
Judge Hints at Plans to Rein In Google’s Illegal Play Store Monopoly

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A jury in December found that Google broke US antitrust laws through deals and billing rules that gave an unfair boost to its Google Play app store. On Thursday, a judge began laying out how Google could be forced to change its business as a penalty. The remedies under consideration could drive the most consequential shakeup ever to Google’s dominance over the Android universe.

Fortnite video game developer Epic Games, which beat Google in the trial that saw a jury declare the Play store an illegal monopoly, is demanding that federal judge James Donato ban Google from contracts that deter competition. Epic also wants Google to be forced to help competing stores list more apps, giving them a competitive boost. The changes could enable Epic to realize its long-held plan to increase revenue by processing in-game purchases in Fortnite and other titles without using Google’s payment system, and marketing games via its own app store.

Google contends that Epic’s demands would threaten its users’ security and impair the businesses of partners, including Android device makers and app developers. The search company is appealing the jury’s verdict, which could delay the rollout of any penalties for many years—or void them altogether. But Google over the past few years already has had to make some costly changes in Europe and Asia due to court losses and new laws affecting the Play store, and a trial with Epic is currently underway in Australia.

“I want to be clear: Google as an illegal monopolist will have to pay some penalties,” Donato told Epic and Google at a hearing in San Francisco on Thursday. He explained that Google’s loss requires him to pry open the company’s grip on the Android ecosystem in a way that ends Google’s illegal monopoly and also removes its ill-gotten gains from years of unfair dominance.

That would mean major changes for the industry that has built up around Google’s Android operating system—and potentially more choices for consumers. It could require Google investing cash into new projects to make things right, Donato said.

Donato expressed frustration with Google’s claims that any changes would be bad for consumers and other businesses. “To jump up and down and say the new way is going to be a world no one wants to live in, it’s unfounded,” he said. But he also spent hours in the hearing quizzing two economists, one appearing on behalf of each company, about how to craft penalties for Google without being unreasonable.

Among Epic’s requests is that Google be barred from striking deals that prevent or discourage companies from working with alternatives to its app store. In the past the company has required hardware companies that want to offer Google Play on their devices to agree not to work with or promote alternative app stores. That prevented most consumers from ever seeing other app stores, since most device makers want to offer Google’s app store, because it is the largest.

Rival app stores such as those from Amazon and Samsung also have struggled to persuade developers to list their apps outside of Google Play, because maintaining apps in multiple stores takes extra work. To even the playing field, Epic proposes that Google be required for six years to provide rival stores a way to list apps that are hosted on Google Play. That would allow people to browse alternative stores without feeling they are missing out on popular apps, giving the store a better chance of success in the long term.

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Paresh Dave

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May 23, 2024
6 Practical Tips for Using Anthropic’s Claude Chatbot

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Joel Lewenstein, a head of product design at Anthropic, was recently crawling beneath his new house to adjust the irrigation system when he ran into a conundrum: The device’s knobs made no sense. Instead of scouring the internet for a product manual, he opened up the app for Anthropic’s Claude chatbot on his phone and snapped a photo. Its algorithms analyzed the image and provided more context for what each knob might do.

When I tested OpenAI’s image features for ChatGPT last year, I found it similarly useful—at least for low-stakes tasks. I’d recommend you turn to AI image analysis for identifying those random cords around your house, but not to guess the identity of a loose prescription pill.

Anthropic released the iOS app that helped out Lewenstein for all to download earlier this month. I decided to try out the Claude app, in line with a goal I’d set to experiment with a wider variety of chatbots this year. And I chatted over video with Lewenstein to see what advice he had for getting started with Claude and how to ask questions in a way that elicit the most useful answers.

Get Chatty

Decades of Google Search dominating the web has trained us to type blunt and concise queries when we want something. To get the most out of chatbots like Claude, you need to break free from that approach. “It’s not Google Search,” Lewenstein says. “So you’re not putting in three keywords—you’re really having a conversation with it.” He encourages users to avoid an overly utilitarian communication style and to get a little more verbose with their prompts. Instead of a short phrase, try writing prompts that are a few sentences long or even a couple of paragraphs.

Share Photos

AI image analysis is still fairly new for Anthropic’s chatbot—it was released in March—but it can provide a powerful way to quickly pose questions to the chatbot. Lewenstein recommends using images as a launching point for conversations with Claude, like he did under his house. Although the feature may not always be accurate, it’s useful—and fun—if you keep the limitations in mind and look for opportunities where an image can address your query.

Be Direct

Still not getting the outputs you’d like? A solid troubleshooting technique is to be overly prescriptive in your prompts. “Just talking to Claude like a person actually leads you a little bit astray,” Lewenstein says. Instead, try giving Claude an almost awkward amount of context about how you’d like the answer formatted—for example, by saying they should be in bullet points or short paragraphs, and give it clear direction on the tone it should use. Do you want lyrical answers or something that sounds more technical? Also, consider telling Claude who the intended audience is and what their level of knowledge about the topic may be.

Try, Try Again

If your initial query to Claude doesn’t produce a good result, keep in mind that your first ask is just the starting point. Follow-up prompts and clarifying questions are critical to steering a chatbot in the right direction.

When interacting with any chatbot, I’m quick to start a new conversation thread if the output goes awry, so I can try a different opening prompt. This isn’t the best approach, Lewenstein says.

He suggests staying in that same chat window and providing direct feedback to the bot about what you’d like done differently, from tone to structure. “I literally just type, ‘No, too complicated. I don’t understand what these words mean. Can you try again, but simplify it one level more,” say Lewenstein, referencing a time when Claude’s summary of a document was confusing.

Upload Big Docs

Speaking of documents, Claude’s ability to analyze uploaded data is one of its strengths. The applications for this are more apparent for workplace use cases, where the chatbot can help with Excel spreadsheets and overflowing email inboxes, but it can be a useful feature outside the office too. If you upload batches of text, Claude can spot trends you might not have otherwise noticed. Ask the chatbot to look for patterns in language use or the topics covered. Got a PDF that you need to read but is so long that your eyes glaze over? Claude can help focus your attention on the most important aspect of the document first.

I uploaded the text transcript of my conversation with Lewenstein to Claude and asked what quotes it would highlight as important. The chatbot did an impeccable job of capturing the conversation’s key themes, and it flagged many of the quotes that I ultimately decided to pull for this newsletter. (Anthropic’s policies mean that, unless you opt in, your input data is unlikely to be used to train its AI models.)

Text Like You’re Friends

Yes, you should play around with writing longer and more specific prompts to Claude, but it’s also smart to approach conversations with chatbots as a back-and-forth volley of messages. “I actually find the mobile app to be a really natural form factor for it, because you chat with people all the time on your phone,” says Lewenstein.

When I uploaded a photo of a robot mural I saw in a cool San Francisco bar to the Claude app, the chatbot provided a poetic description of the art. It wasn’t able to guess which city the bar was located in, an almost impossible task, but the conversation’s cadence did feel like messaging an eager friend. Claude thanked me when I finally revealed the bar’s location: “My assumptions were delightfully upended.”

I need to use it more to really get the hang of Claude, but I already feel like the chatbot’s outputs have a friendly flair. Although ChatGPT is still my go-to chatbot, I could see myself adding Claude to the mix when I’m wanting to message with an AI tool that prioritizes engaging, human-sounding outputs over a more dry, efficient style of communication. It’s important to remain open to using AI tools that you haven’t tried before. Chatbots continue to improve and change rapidly, so it’s far too early to get locked into a single tool.

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Reece Rogers

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May 9, 2024
Opera’s AI assistant can now summarize web pages on Android | TechCrunch

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Opera’s in-browser AI product, called Aria, can now summarize text-based web pages on Android. The AI-powered web page summarizing tool quickly condenses news articles, blog posts or research papers in a short summary that typically fits in one screen.

The new feature, announced Monday, can help users quickly understand a topic and pinpoint the important details. To use it, visit any text-based web page and then tap the three dots in the top right corner of the Opera Android browser and select the “Summarize” option next to the Aria icon. A chat with Aria will then pop up with the requested summary in it.

To access the feature, update to the latest version of Opera for Android and log in to an Opera account, or sign up for a new one.

Aria launched last year and functions like any other AI search companion. The assistant has a chatbot-like interface that answers questions as an alternative to searching the web for answers.

Opera has been building out Aria since its launch and has been expanding its functionality through its AI Feature Drops Program, which enables users to get early access to additional AI features. Most recently, Opera updated Aria with the ability to generate images using Imagen2 by Google. It can also read text answers out loud.

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Aisha Malik

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May 6, 2024
Why Apple’s iPhone Browser-Choice Option Sucks

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A few representatives from smaller browser companies also expressed that they wanted more information included with Apple’s choice process, like definitions of what a browser is for less tech-savvy users and descriptions of the different browsers’ specialties. “Giving people information about the choice, and also information about what they’re choosing is really, really important,” says Kush Amlani, a global competition and regulatory counsel at Mozilla, which makes the Firefox browser.

Sophie Dembinski, a head of public policy and climate action at Ecosia, mentioned how Apple’s pop-up appears for all iPhone users even if they’ve already gone into their phone’s settings and set an alternative browser as their default. In comparison, Google’s browser choice screen for Android users won’t show up if you’ve already gone through the steps of setting a preference for a third-party option.

While many developers are unhappy with Apple’s implementation, not every company with a browser on the choice screen expressed frustration. “We believe that Apple’s approach to presenting the browser choice screen is fair and acceptable,” says Andrew Moroz Frost, the Aloha Browser founder. He pointed out the randomized order of the browsers shown on the pop-up as one example of Apple designing it in a fair manner.

Richard Socher, the founder and CEO of You.com, seemed more encouraged by there being a browser choice screen that includes the search-focused startup rather than frustrated by Apple’s implementation. “I think it’s great that there’s not the default already preselected,” he says. Socher highlighted the randomized order as a positive sign as well.

Is this choice screen a true turning point for alternative browsers to grow their user base? “We’re expecting to have a clear picture on user uplift within months, not weeks,” says Dembinski. While some browsers reported initial upticks in downloads, it still seems too soon to make sweeping generalizations about the long-term efficacy of Apple’s choice screen.

“We would like to encourage platform providers to also level out the playing field for app developers around the world, not just in the EU,” says Jan Standal, a vice president of product marketing at Opera. Some of the companies WIRED spoke with remain hopeful that the precedent of browser choice screens set by the DMA will inspire international software changes.

Shortly after Apple’s choice screen launched, the European Commision announced that the screen would be part of its wider investigation into how Apple, Google, and Meta might be breaking these updated regulations: “The Commission is concerned that Apple’s measures, including the design of the web browser choice screen, may be preventing users from truly exercising their choice of services within the Apple ecosystem, in contravention of Article 6(3) of the DMA.” In keeping with its slow-moving tradition, this investigation may take up to a year to complete.

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Reece Rogers

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April 29, 2024
Airchat Is Silicon Valley’s Latest Obsession

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Ravikant said most of the funding for Airchat has come from his own fund, as well as from Jeff Fagnan, a founding partner at Accomplice Ventures. “[OpenAI CEO] Sam Altman threw in a check, kind of blindly,” Ravikant said. He communicated all of this to me in a public response on Airchat, after politely declining to respond to my DMs and insisting our conversation should happen in public. “It can’t be a side-channel, DM-based interview. That’s the old world that we are leaving behind,” he told me. (In the old world, as in the new world, conducting an interview synchronously is almost always … preferable.)

So far the Airchat feed appears to be filled with tech enthusiasts, early adopters, venture capitalists, and journalists. There’s lots of Bitcoin posting. Winefluencer Gary Vaynerchuk is on the app. So is Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan. This weekend Tan posted, “Breakfast is the first step to greatness. What are you eating this morning?” So far it has more than 96 audio responses. Social media is back, baby.

Airchat has AI. What doesn’t? The app’s deployment, though, is quietly sensible. The transcripts for each Airchat voice note appear almost immediately, and they’re good. Pronounced “Ums” appear within the transcript, but other slight pauses and filler words are edited out. When I used the word “Airchat” in a voice note, it first showed as “error chat,” then quickly self-corrected. The app appears to be able to recognize and transcribe other languages, too; one user spoke in Russian and the transcript appeared in Cyrillic, while another spoke in Moroccan Arabic, known as darija, and then marveled in a follow-up voice note at how good the transcription was.

So what will happen to all of this voice data? Ravikant claimed that the creators of Airchat have no intention of training a large language model on user voices and making “weird synthetic clones of you.” He also said he wouldn’t sell Airchat data to another company building AI models, especially given how relatively small the app is and how uncategorized its data. Airchat will, however, likely use people’s voice data to train a model that improves its own audio and transcription functions. If you’re in, you’ve opted in.

I asked Ravikant about whether some AI company might still scrape Airchat data without a formal agreement. He replied, “We’ll block them, we’ll sue them, and then, if I have a battery of orbital satellites, we’d nuke them from orbit.”

Airchat’s monetization plans are less clear. Navikant hasn’t said anything about charging for access. The current format seems to lend itself to audio ads, but there’s always the risk of making the app unlistenable.

There’s also the issue of content moderation when people’s unfiltered sound bytes are posted to a timeline the moment they release the virtual microphone. One troll seemed to be pushing the boundaries of it on Sunday, cursing the app’s founders, calling the app “fucking trash,” and in as many words telling the founders to, uh, perform fellatio. The voice note is still there. So is a thread where two users go back and forth telling a story about “gay Jewish teens” and “neo-Nazi killers.”

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Lauren Goode

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April 15, 2024
Use Apple Shortcuts to Build the Ultimate Daily Digital Journal

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I started journaling in 2019. It’s not that I love keeping a journal, exactly. It’s more that I find my brain works better if I spend a little time dumping its contents onto paper every morning. This practice got me through 2020, an extremely difficult year, and I’ve kept it up ever since.

My journal isn’t advanced. I’ve got a few sections recommended by my therapist from around the time I started—there’s a section I fill in every day with things I’m looking forward to, for example. I use another section to think through what I’m going to eat and other things I’m going to do that day. All of this is straightforward; I just use a template that includes headers for those things.

But there’s a bit of information I like to gather and include. Each day’s weather, for example. I’ve noticed that I’m often in a bad mood on rainy, gray days, so recording the weather along with my thoughts gives me some helpful context when I’m reviewing entries later. I also like to know what time I wrote my entry, where I was when I wrote it, and—if possible—include a quote of the day or something else to reflect on.

I could gather all of the above information myself manually, every morning. But I’ve found it’s a lot faster to use Apple Shortcuts for the job. This application, which comes preinstalled on every Mac, iPhone, and iPad, can automatically pull in all kinds of information and format it nicely for my journal. I run a custom automation every morning. Here’s how I built it.

The Date, Weather, and Location

Apple via Justin Pot

Fire up Apple Shortcuts on your device of choice and make a new shortcut. This software can be a little confusing, but don’t worry, I’m going to talk you through everything. In the right column you will see a number of different tiny automations you can run. Drag as many of these as you want to the main column, which is on the left. I like to search for what I’m looking for, but if you prefer, you can manually explore the options to get a sense of what Shortcuts can do.

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Justin Pot

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April 14, 2024
The World Doesn’t Need More Journal Apps

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You also get no help in selecting these photos. The company does not use AI to prompt or resurface memories, the way that pretty much every other photo app does. “There’s a big difference between passive reminders and actively chronicling the moments that matter to you,” says Retro founder Nathan Sharp in an email.

Retro’s team is made up of six former Instagrammers, and their original intention was to create a better Instagram, a place where you can share snaps and commentary with people you actually care about. The Journals feature expands on that by allowing you to share that content with a larger group of people.

For example, if you’re a parent, you can create a Journal for each of your children. You can post photos to that journal and share with grandparents. Then you can share public links to that journal via Instagram or Facebook. People you are not friends with on Retro will see your Journals as curated photo albums.

“We wanted to emphasize the ongoing use case,” Sharp said. “This isn’t just a photo dump. This is building something for your future self to look back on.”

Shine’s use case is similar. It’s aimed at people from multiple generations with different phones who want to pool photos on similar themes or events. (Even the seemingly dated color choice and app design seems a deliberate callback to an earlier time.) Let’s say you attend a baby shower. You can create an album for that baby shower and add photos via two separate modes. In Magic Mode, Shine’s AI will select pictures for you, or you can add photos manually. Then you can share that album with whomever you choose, and they can also add pictures.

As we discussed in our review of the feature, Apple’s Journal app also prompts you to write about your day on a regular basis. You can schedule reminders and turn on prompts. You can paste in photos, locations, and voice memos. This feature is, of course, available only on iPhones; moreover, it’s not remarkably different from a few other, older apps that also provide journaling services (WIRED has a few other suggestions here). Apple is presenting the feature as part of its new suite of mental health services.

Paper Trail

How do you make or share memories? Like most people, I share my photos haphazardly: in photo batches texted to group chats on different messaging apps, in shared Google Photos folders, in Instagram posts, or in the occasional Story or Facebook Reel. It would be very nice if every single person I know could get on the same app. Unfortunately, every person in my life also has other people in their lives, so I suspect this will turn out the same way as when everyone tried to force everyone else to use Slack, or Discord, or WhatsApp. I half-heartedly texted Retro invites to a few friends, but only got a disinterested “What is this?” in response.

Sharp also suggested creating a private journal with my husband, but with a 6- and 9-year-old, we are unfortunately too busy making memories to document them thoroughly (my spouse also hates social media). I scrolled back through our text messages for possible snaps, but I really do need to enlist an AI to help me decide which of our constant backs-and-forths of “Where are you?”, “Where did you guys go?”, and “Did you get garlic bread?” moments are worth memorializing.

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Adrienne So

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April 8, 2024
It’s Time to Switch to a Privacy Browser

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The browser is part of a bigger project to keep internet browsing anonymous: Use Tor and you use the Tor Project network, a complex, encrypted relay system managed by the Tor community, making it much harder for anyone else to follow your activities online.

As well as this additional layer of anonymity, Tor Browser is super-strict on the background scripts and tracking tech that sites can run. It also blocks fingerprinting, a method where advertisers attempt to recognize the unique characteristics of your device.

At the end of each browsing session, everything gets wiped, including cookies left behind by sites and the browsing history inside the Tor Browser app itself. In other words, private browsing that leaves no trace is the default—and indeed the only option.

Brave gives you a clean, speedy browsing experience.

Brave via David Nield

Brave comes with all the tracking protection features you would expect: Ads are completely blocked, there are tight restrictions on the data that sites can gather through cookies and tracking scripts, and you’re always kept informed about what’s happening.

The browser comes with an optional built-in VPN, though it costs extra ($10 a month). You can also, if you want, use Brave to access the Tor network we mentioned with the Tor browser and take advantage of its anonymizing relay service that hides your location and browsing data.

There’s no doubt about the effectiveness of Brave’s tracker-blocking technologies, and getting around the web in Brave is quick and snappy. It’s a comprehensive package and one that strikes a well-judged balance between simplicity and power for the majority of users.

Brave has regularly pioneered features related to innovative web technologies, including cryptocurrencies, NFTs, and (most recently) artificial intelligence; there’s actually a new AI assistant built into it. In other words, it’s not exclusively focused on security and privacy.

Firefox is part of a suite of privacy products from Mozilla.

Firefox via David Nield

Firefox has long been at the forefront of online privacy—blocking tracking cookies across sites by default, for example—and it continues to be one of the best options for making sure you’re giving away as little data as possible as you make your way across the web.

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David Nield

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April 6, 2024
Google Podcasts Is Gone. Here’s How to Transfer Your Subscriptions

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Steve McLendon, a product manager at Google, admits he’s sad to see Google Podcasts head toward the software graveyard. He suggests that the app’s simplicity, one of its core strengths, is what led to its downfall: “Podcast experiences can be improved for users in a way that I think Google Podcasts would never really be able to deliver.”

After launching the app in 2018, the company wound down Google Podcasts on April 2. YouTube Music will serve as Google’s new home for podcast listening. While some users crave the bare-bones experience of an RSS feed catcher for podcasts, McLendon is eyeing a future where algorithmic discovery and video podcast clips are more central to the user experience.

“Google may be notorious for having lots of different products that kind of do similar things,” he says. “So, which is actually the one that we’re invested in?” While McLendon wants to create a user experience where podcast-only listeners feel welcome, he’s excited by the multimedia possibilities as well. For example, if someone watches a bunch of clips from NBA games on YouTube, then their YouTube Music account could suggest some basketball podcasts.

How to Migrate From Google Podcasts to YouTube Music

McLendon’s team launched a tool to help Google Podcasts users transfer their show subscriptions to YouTube Music. The feature is still just for users in the United States, but McLendon says the company eventually plans an international rollout. It’s worth noting that users have to complete this migration before Google makes the data unavailable in July.

Start by opening the app on your Android or iOS device and toggling to the Home tab. Since announcing that it would be shutting down its Podcasts app, Google has begun displaying a notification at the top of the app’s Home screen that offers a quick link to export your subscriptions. Look for this notification at the top and select Export subscriptions. (In a browser, the same option should appear under the Explore shows tab.) If you’d like to switch everything over to YouTube Music, choose the Export button. Tapping this on your phone will automatically open the YouTube Music app and confirm which account you want to use to complete the change. After you click the Transfer as… button, YouTube Music will double-check whether you want to add the RSS feeds for all of your podcasts to your library. Then the process begins.

The tool was able to migrate all 12 of my podcast subscriptions in under a minute. (If you’re a podcast fanatic with hundreds of subscriptions, it may take longer.) Afterward, you can listen to your favorite shows in YouTube Music by tapping Podcasts at the top of the Home or Library tab. If you don’t immediately see the Podcasts option, you may need to scroll through the gray buttons to the left. If you’ve used YouTube Music, you’ll know that a premium subscription is required if you want to listen to music while your phone screen is locked. Thankfully, this is not the case for podcasts; you can stream or play downloaded shows while the screen is locked, even if you don’t have a subscription.

Alternative Podcast Listening Options

Frustrated with this change and on the hunt for another minimalist podcast app? For iPhone owners, the Overcast app is a strong option that mirrors the streamlined nature of Google Podcasts. Pocket Casts is another well-designed app that might fit your preferences, and it’s available on both Android and Apple devices.

Luckily, if you decide against YouTube Music and you want to leave Google’s podcast ecosystem entirely, you can still take your show subscriptions with you. Follow the same steps listed in the section above; when you arrive at the YouTube Music export option, find the secondary option labeled Export for another app and press Download. This process will save an OPML file to your device.

In the Overcast app, you can upload this subscription list by going to Settings and scrolling down to Import OPML. The migration process from Google Podcasts to Pocket Casts is a little trickier but still doable. Open the Files app on your smartphone and locate the downloaded OPML data file. Choose to share the file, and then send it over to Pocket Casts. This should transfer your show subscriptions to the new app.

Update, April 2, 2024, 8 am EDT: This story was updated to reflect hat Google Podcasts is now officially gone.

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Reece Rogers

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April 2, 2024
Google Podcasts is shutting down soon, users urged to move to YouTube Music | TechCrunch

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Google is shutting down its Podcasts app in the U.S. in a matter of days. The company has begun warning the app’s users they will need to migrate their subscriptions to YouTube Music by April 2 to follow and stream their favorite shows going forward. Users who don’t make the move immediately will still have additional time to migrate, but will no longer be able to stream from the Podcasts app directly after this date.

The Google Podcasts app, installed over 500 million times on Android devices globally, for over half a decade has offered a simple and streamlined interface for discovering, following and listening to podcasts, as well as tools to add podcasts by RSS feed. Unfortunately for fans of the app, the tech giant said last September it would begin to wind down the Podcasts app in early 2024 as part of its broader plan to centralize its audio services under YouTube.

In 2020, YouTube Music offered a similar transition strategy to move music listeners away from Google Play Music ahead of its shutdown that same year. However, the Google Podcasts app continued to be maintained for years because YouTube Music wasn’t ready to support podcasts until more recently. By the end of 2023, YouTube Music was able to support podcasts globally, and, by February, they had the ability to upload their RSS feeds, too.

The move to shift podcasting over to YouTube could help Google become a bigger player in the space, not only by combining its efforts and sharpening its focus, but also because interest in video podcasts — which were already popular on YouTube — is on the rise. This week, for example, Spotify forged a deal with Universal Music Group (UMG) to bring video podcasts to U.S. users of its streaming app after earlier in March announcing tests of video podcasts in 11 other markets around the world.

Bleeping Computer was the first to notice the shutdown date for Google Podcasts in the U.S., and a support page on Google’s site confirms that users in the U.S. will only be able to use the Podcasts app through the end of March 2024. For those who miss the in-app pop-ups, Google will offer users additional time to save their subscriptions by allowing them to use the app’s export feature through July 2024.

Google did not immediately return a request for comment, but after publication did respond to say that while it was still “tracking towards” the April 2 timeline for the U.S., it has not shared a timeline for the rest of the world yet.

From its earlier statements, though, the plan is to discontinue Google Podcasts globally in 2024.

Updated, 3/29/24, 5:00 PM ET with Google comment.

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Sarah Perez

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March 29, 2024
Dating apps are horrible. A Colorado bill would make them worse.

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On Hinge, the basic text prompts where users share information about themselves are an unmitigated hellscape.

“All sex is choke sex when you’re being strangled by the invisible hand of capitalism,” read one profile I came across. The app offers a surprisingly large number of men who like to do yoga in the nude. A different man holds up a picture of himself with a “world’s smallest cock” mug and yet didn’t bother to post a picture of the adorable rooster. Things aren’t much better once you open a chat: I recently asked a man in his 40s what he liked about Spain and he replied simply, “Chicas.”

These are relatively tame examples. Unfortunately, some people deal with dangerous and aggressive users on dating apps, and lawmakers are taking note. But however terrible online dating may be, government intervention isn’t the answer: The problem is the users, not the apps.

A bill recently introduced in Colorado aims to make dating apps such as Hinge and Bumble safer for users. The first section of S.B. 24-011 would force all dating services with any users in Colorado to submit an annual report to Colorado’s attorney general about misconduct reports from users in the state or about users in the state. If that isn’t available, the app must report all misconduct reports from the entire United States. These reports would all become public.

While the bill leaves some of the details up to the state’s attorney general, this would probably mean that when people file false reports about each other on dating apps, the reports would all become public record. The bill uses the term “information about a member,” suggesting that it would require disclosure about each individual member. Scorned lovers, racists, incels, and others with hostile motives could file false reports and harm people’s job and dating prospects in the future. And a report on a government website looks a lot more legitimate than someone mad on social media. These reports might even lead to law enforcement investigating innocent users.

If you file a report against an ex to get back with them, that would be filed with the attorney general and become public record. And if a racist files a false report against every person of color, that could come up when future employers research those people. I also research dates prior to going out with them less as a matter of safety than the fact that a lot of men who have asked me on a date turned out to be married. But if I was unaware of how the law required disclosure, I might be dissuaded from dating a man if I saw this come up in his search results before even clicking on the link.

Like trying Tinder before using Hinge, the prior version of the bill was somehow even worse. It would have changed Colorado law to allow a dating service user injured by another member to sue the dating service if a report was ever filed with the dating service prior to the incident. It doesn’t matter if the two people didn’t meet on the app, and it doesn’t even matter if the misconduct report is true. The report only has to be filed before the “incident.” That means that even if the user is suspended and had connected with another user before the report was filed, if they harm that user, the app would still have been liable.

A spokesman for Democratic Gov. Jared Polis said that “the Governor believes in a free and open internet and that decisions about how people interact on social media are up to the individual, not the government.”

At a time when many elected officials are seeking to blame platforms for the behavior of users, Polis offers a different approach. “Whether you meet a potential date at a bar, dance club, coffee shop, or online it is important to take safety seriously,” the spokesman explained. “The Governor appreciates the sponsors’ willingness to make changes to the bill that removed any private right of action and will allow dating sites to continue to be available to Coloradans.” Polis’ office did not comment on any of my abysmal dating stories.

Dating apps are horrible because they have horrible users—like the man who brought me to a cafeteria, drank a beverage that he packed for himself without asking me if I wanted one, grilled me for 15 minutes, and ghosted. (I later learned he was 14 years older than he claimed and Hinge had repeatedly banned him. He’s tried to match with me three times more since that day.)

The Colorado bill would not help keep users safe but harm their future dating and employment prospects, often without reason. This is the wrong approach.

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Shoshana Weissmann

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March 24, 2024
Learn How to Set Medication Reminders on Your Phone
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Medisafe offers short videos for most medications where a doctor describes the medication and explains possible side effects and other useful information. The app will even flag possible interactions if you are taking multiple medications. The free version is excellent, but you can get rid of ads and unlock some extra customization options with a subscription ($5/month or $40/year).

How to Set Reminders on an Android Phone

There are various ways you might set a medication reminder on an Android phone.

Use Google Assistant
Google via Simon Hill
The quickest and easiest way to set a reminder on your Android phone is to use Google Assistant. For example, you can say, “Hey Google, remind me to take my pill every day at 9 am.”

If you have a family group set up, you can also set reminders for other folks in your family by saying something like, “Hey Google, remind Jenny to take her pill every day at 8 pm.”

To review and tweak any reminders you have set, say, “Hey Google, show my reminders.”

Use Google Calendar

You could also set up medication reminders in Google Calendar. Open the Calendar app, select a day, tap the Plus icon, and choose Reminder. You can specify a time and tap where it says Does not repeat, then change to Every day or set another interval. When you are happy with the details, tap Save.

Use a Medication App

As we said above, of the many medication apps available for Android, our top pick is Medisafe’s Pill Reminder and Med Tracker. This slick app is the Android version of the iPhone app we recommend above, and it’s easy to set up and offers the same wealth of features. You can set reminders for multiple medications, track your consumption, set up refill alerts, track symptoms, and get warnings about possible interactions.

How to Set Reminders on a Samsung Phone

Photograph: Simon Hill

Samsung Health App

As well as the methods listed above for Android phones, Samsung offers excellent medication reminders in its Health app on Samsung phones. Here’s how to set them up:
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Simon Hill

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March 15, 2024
How to Download All of Your TikTok Videos

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Next, an array of sharing options pop up. You can choose the email option to send the file to yourself as an attachment, or upload it to a cloud service like Google Drive. To directly download the file, swipe to the end of the Share To options and tap More. There will be even more options. Look for options that allow you to save the video locally.

On Android, the best option for saving it to your phone will be labeled Files by Google. Tap this icon to download the video to your phone, then use Android’s built-in Files app to browse your downloads. On iOS, look for the option Save to Files, then choose to save the video either in your device’s internal storage or in your iCloud drive.

Download TikTok Videos to Your Computer

The simplest option for collecting your work is to download the videos from TikTok’s website or desktop app. This process is very easy compared to the mobile option.

Go to your favorite video on TikTok.com and right-click on it. If you’re looking at your own video and you’re logged in to your account, or if the video’s creator has marked their posts as downloadable, there will be an option in the right-click menu that says Download Video.

Click that option.

Congrats, you’ve done it! The video will be saved as an MP4 in your downloads folder.

If you don’t see the option to download the video when you right-click, that probably means the video’s creator hasn’t shared the video publicly or has chosen to disallow downloads.

Use Screen Record

It’s not the tidiest option, but you can also record a copy of the video via screen record on your phone. Screen record basically takes a video screenshot; once turned on, it will record whatever is playing on your screen until you hit Stop. Play the TikTok clip while screen recording and you’ll have a quick-and-dirty copy saved to your device.

You’ll need to play the video all the way through in real time. Keep in mind that this will capture everything that happens on the screen while you’re recording, so if a notification pops up or you swipe to another app, that will all be in the video. It also means you’ll still see all the menu buttons and text that are normally around the edges of the screen in a TikTok video, so it won’t be a perfectly clean copy of the video. But it’s better than nothing.

You can record your screen on iOS and on Android phones with Android 11 or higher.

On iOS, go into Settings, then Control Center. Tap the green plus sign Add button next to the Screen Recording option. This will add a little gray-dot icon button to your homescreen. Tap that and Screen Recording will start.

On Android, swipe down from the top of your screen to bring up your notifications and settings screen. From there, you might have to expand the menu at top and swipe through your settings widgets. Look for Screen Record. Tap that and you’ll have options to record device audio and whether to show touches on the screen. Tap start to record.

What’s With the Watermark?

If you’ve downloaded your videos, you probably noticed the faint TikTok watermark in the frame. This watermark will appear in any videos you’ve published as well as in videos you download from other creators. Unfortunately, there’s no official way to download a video directly from the platform after it’s been posted without that watermark being applied. If a video is still in your drafts in the TikTok app—meaning you’ve shot and edited it but not posted it yet—you can select the Save Video option and download a version of it without the watermark.

In general, if you’re creating videos, your best bet is to use a separate video editing app to edit your video before posting it online. That way you’ll always have the original cut and not have to worry about whether your distribution platform—and all your hard work—is about to suddenly go poof.

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Boone Ashworth

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March 12, 2024
TikTok is now letting creators in more countries earn money for their effects | TechCrunch

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TikTok is expanding its Effect Creator Rewards monetization program to more regions and lowering its payout threshold, the company announced today. The program, which launched in May 2023, rewards creators for the effects they make through TikTok’s AR development platform, Effect House. TikTok is also updating the program’s payout model, as creators will now only receive rewards for effects used in public videos.

The program is expanding to 33 more regions, including Argentina, Austria, Bahrain, Belgium, Belarus, Chile, Colombia, Czechia, Denmark, Ecuador, Egypt, Greece, Hungary, Israel, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Mexico, Morocco, New Zealand, Norway, Oman, Peru, Portugal, Qatar, Romania, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey and Uruguay. Effect Creator Rewards is now available in a total of 53 regions.

Previously, creators needed an effect to have been used in 200,000 qualified videos within 90 days for the effect to start collecting rewards. Now, each effect needs to be used in just 100,000 qualified videos to start earning rewards. When TikTok first launched the program last year, creators needed an effect to have been used in 500,000 videos for it to start earning rewards. The company brought the number down to 200,000 in October. Today’s update brings the eligibility requirement much lower than the program’s initial requirement.

As for the updated payout model, only effects used in qualified public videos will be eligible to collect rewards, whereas in the past, qualified videos also included private videos. TikTok acknowledges that creators can expect their effects to receive fewer Effect Creator Rewards qualified videos due to this change, but to compensate for this, it’s moving away from a flat fee model and will follow a RPM (revenue per mile) model.

With the new model, creators collect rewards based on total qualified videos that used their effect within the first 90 days, the company told TechCrunch. When an effect reaches 100,000 unique public video publishes, a creator will start collecting rewards and they will continue to collect rewards for every additional qualified video until the end of the 90-day period, or until they reach the maximum reward. The change applies to all effects published from today onwards, while all effects published before today will continue to follow the previous payout and requirement model.

Since the program’s launch last year, TikTok says some creators have reached its maximum payouts of $14,000 per effect and $50,000 per month.

Today’s announcement comes a few days after TikTok announced that its revamped creator fund has increased total creator revenue by over 250% within the last six months. The fund, which launched a year ago and eventually replaced TikTok’s original $1 billion Creator Fund, is exiting beta in the coming weeks.

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Aisha Malik

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March 12, 2024
Bank apps share too much data: Consumer Reports

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Banks need to work on the transparency of their apps, especially when it comes to data sharing and user control of targeted advertising.

This is one of the findings to emerge from Consumer Reports’ recent evaluation of 10 banking apps for fair and safe consumer practices. The nonprofit covered traditional banks (Bank of America, Capital One, JPMorgan Chase, U.S. Bank and Wells Fargo), online banks (Ally Financial and Varo) and neobanks (Albert, Chime, Current). This report follows the organization’s deep dives into peer-to-peer payments and buy now/pay later, all part of its initiative, which was announced in 2021, to test and rate digital finance products and services with the same scrutiny that it applies to other products.

The report has made an impact: The methodology notes that all but Wells Fargo agreed to discuss Consumer Reports’ findings and that Albert, Ally, Chase, Chime and Current made or are making adjustments in response.

The financial institutions covered “have been quite receptive to our feedback,” said Delicia Hand, financial fairness director at Consumer Reports.

Consumer Reports’ analysts found that banks share customer data beyond what they consider necessary to use the app’s core services, and don’t always let consumers use the app to control how they are targeted, such as by turning off advertising.

“Most consumers would not be surprised that their data is used to improve the product within the company or to market new products to them,” said Hand. “Beyond this, especially for marketing with third parties or advertising purposes outside of that specific banking service ecosystem, is what we flagged as concerning and not necessary to use the service.”

In its review of the 10 banking apps, CR found that almost all use data beyond “what is necessary” to provide the service, including sharing data with marketing partners.

A survey that CR conducted in December of about 2,000 U.S. adults found that 57% of Americans with bank accounts are somewhat or very concerned that banks may share their data with other companies without letting them know. Further, 76% of those surveyed feel it is very important that banks get their permission to share their banking data with another company, while 69% feel the same about limiting the purposes for which banks can share their data with another company. Yet only half of the apps CR evaluated provided an in-app control to turn off targeted advertising.

The ideal, said Hand, “is you download the bank app and as part of the onboarding process there is a privacy module that lets you know how we share your information and what you can do about it, that is simple and clear.”

However, Jim Perry, senior strategist at Market Insights, wonders if consumers think about these issues in the same way.

“Despite the industry conversations around the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s proposed rule to implement section 1033 of Dodd-Frank, most consumers love the benefits that data sharing allows,” he said. “Consumers simply want to stop the tsunami of unsolicited advertising.”

CR also took issue with the lack of a clear commitment to real-time fraud monitoring and notifying users of suspicious activities. It found six of the apps studied explicitly commit to monitoring transactions for fraud in real time, while two make no such commitment and another two commit to real-time alerts only.

“Our engagement with companies revealed that while robust real-time fraud-monitoring practices may in fact be in place, that is not sufficiently reflected in most company documentation,” says the report. It noted that Chime and Current shared more information publicly through trust and safety blogs after speaking with CR.

“We think explicit public commitment holds companies more accountable,” said Hand.

Three of the apps studied do not publish consumer education about fraud and scams in their apps, even though all do so on their websites — although the report notes that Ally will launch such content by the end of the month.

“The persistent stream of stories about fraud will eventually make the issue of real-time fraud monitoring to be a must-have functionality in order to be perceived as truly looking out for consumer safety and security,” said Perry.

The report also evaluated accessibility features within the apps, including built-in functionality to accommodate vision and hearing impairments and availability to people who speak Spanish.

“Much more can be done in this area,” the report concluded.

In terms of accessibility, CR found that most banking service providers it studied met baseline accessibility standards on their websites, but few of them carried over such functionality to the app, beyond ensuring compatibility with operating system features such as screen readers. CR also observed a divergence between traditional banks, which all made their apps available in Spanish, and the digital banking providers, which did not offer the same.

“This is particularly notable since many of the neobanks or digital-only banking services claim to focus on the needs of underserved communities,” said Hand.

After looking at the findings, Sharon Garcia, director of communications for the National Association for Latino Community Asset Builders, or NALCAB, said, “It makes good business sense for banks to prioritize inclusivity and accessibility for Latinos and Spanish-speaking immigrants, as they constitute one of the largest and most powerful consumer groups in the country. In addition, Latino consumers are loyal to brands and companies that target them authentically, respecting their culture and language.”

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Miriam Cross

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March 8, 2024
How to Open Spotify Links If You Aren’t a Spotify User

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Spotify dominates the music industry. This becomes really obvious if you don’t use Spotify: You end up being sent, and inevitably clicking on, Spotify links all the time. It happens on social media, yes, but also in text exchanges with friends, in emails, and in DMs. The thought is a good one; someone enjoyed a piece of music and wanted to share it with you. The problem, though, is that the Spotify link is mostly useless if you don’t use Spotify.

What if you use other streaming apps, such as those offered by Apple, Amazon, and YouTube, to listen to music? Are you doomed to search for the track, album, or artist on those services manually? Is that forever your fate? Absolutely not. Here are a few tools that can help you turn Spotify links into links for your preferred music service. (Just note, these tools will work to locate songs, artists, and albums across platforms, but since playlists are usually unique to each platform, these methods won’t work with custom playlists.)

Google Chrome: An Extension to Automatically Redirect Links

If you use Google Chrome or a compatible browser like Microsoft Edge, the browser extension Music Link can automatically open all Spotify links in whatever music app you like. Just install the extension and click its icon to configure it. Choose which music service you prefer and you’re done: Any Spotify link you get from now on will redirect to your app of choice.

You can optionally uncheck whatever services you’re fine with getting links to. SoundCloud, for example, tends to let you play music regardless of whether you have an account, and a lot of its offerings aren’t on other platforms, so you might as well not redirect those links. For the most part, though, this is the kind of extension you can install and never think about ever again.

iPhone and iPad: Song.link for Apple Shortcuts

Chrome extensions may not always work on iPhones or iPads, but thankfully there’s an Apple shortcut for redirecting Spotify links. Just copy any Spotify URL to the clipboard then launch the shortcut Song.Link. This will find the URL in your clipboard and offer you links to the song on other platforms. There’s even a YouTube link, which is helpful if you don’t subscribe to any streaming service.

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Justin Pot

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March 5, 2024
These Companies Have a Plan to Kill Apps

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In another example, Yue asks the phone to find a gift for his grandma who cannot get out of bed. It generated an interface with several products within carousels, and each row had a brief explanation of why the product might be a good fit. He settled on the Kindle.

Yue then did a long-press on the product card to ask another query: “What is the screen made of?” The phone generated the answer as a paragraph of text below (notably with no sources), and when he then asked to watch unboxing videos, it added a row of YouTube videos on the topic.

This wizardry is reminiscent of Siri cofounder Dag Kittlaus’ onstage demo of Viv way back in 2016, which was designed to be a conversational smart layer that let users interact with various services. His live demo also included asking by voice the digital assistant to book him a hotel room in Palm Springs. Clearly mighty impressed, Samsung snapped up Viv later that same year, and we’ve not really seen anything of it since.

You can get a pretty good glimpse of how Brain Technologies’ tech works with its app, Natural AI, which it released in 2020. Yue says his company pioneered the large action models that can enable a digital AI assistant to execute tasks. Since the company had an early start, its AI can purportedly generate interfaces for more than 4 million functions it has trained since 2016. That should cover almost anything you can do on a computing device. “Instead of going to apps, apps come to you,” he says.

But Yue doesn’t think we’re moving away from apps just yet. That’s why this concept device is still an Android phone. If you don’t want to converse with the AI, you can access apps just like normal. The touchscreen isn’t going away either, and he believes this concept is the right combination of AI and a graphical interface.

Brain Technologies has apparently already received tremendous interest from other manufacturers, and Yue says it’s the only AI company the Emerson Collective (Laurene Powell Jobs’ venture capital firm) has invested in. It seems almost inevitable that we’ll see its generated interfaces in more kinds of devices in the future.

“Everything is app-centric,” Yue says. “We’re trying to build a human-centric future. We’re trying to give people more power in this relationship. At the end of the day, whatever the next best interface is, wins.”

Sierra, a startup developing AI-powered agents to “elevate the customer experience” for big companies including WeightWatchers, Sonos, and SiriusXM, is of a similar view, stating that, in the future, a company’s AI version of itself will be just as, if not more, important as its app or website. “It’s going to completely change the way companies exist digitally,” says Bret Taylor, who left his job as co-CEO of Salesforce to start Sierra.

Human After All

The founders of A Phone, A Friend—Tomas Ramanauskas and Tomas Dirvonskas—echoed the same sentiments on making phones more personal with the help of AI. “We think that AI gives an opportunity to humanize this relationship to actually make it more human instead of just this cold, transactional, attention economy kind of thing,” Ramanauskas says.

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Julian Chokkattu

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March 2, 2024
My Quest to Fix a Crashing Roku App Provides a Warning About AI

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Two words in this statement popped out to me like a flying dinosaur in a mixed-reality headset: when possible. When I flagged this in a subsequent call, Roku reassured me that a fix for my issue will happen. In the worst-case scenario, if the problem won’t be solved in the next OS, sufferers will be provided some incantation to have their televisions backdated to the previous operating system. (Does this mean we’re back to hitting that home button five times?) And if that doesn’t work, which Roku says totally won’t be the case, the company will make sure to make everyone satisfied somehow. The company was ready to satisfy me right away, offering me a new TV. I declined, since they weren’t offering it to everyone whose Netflix was crashing.

I think Roku is dealing in good faith. I’d been happy with my Roku-powered smart TV, until I wasn’t because it kept crashing. I take Roku at its word that it’s working on the problem and might actually fix it. I acknowledge that updating software on a static platform like a television set is a particular challenge. And God knows how common bugs are in software.

In any case, my inability to stream Netflix without resetting the TV every time I watch a movie is a pretty trivial problem. And you know what? Even if I never watched Netflix again, I’d live. Now that Netflix has added advertising to its business model, I’m dreading the day when everyone on the service is exposed to endless commercials, unless we pay even more than the already out-of-control monthly fee. Beef was great, but I’d pass if every 10 minutes it was interrupted by pharma ads.

Nevertheless, my Roku problem is a warning. Artificial intelligence is thrusting us into an era that intertwines our lives with digital technology more than ever. If you think that our current software is complicated, just wait until everything works on neural nets! Even the people who create those are mystified about how they work. And, boy, can things go wrong with that stuff. Just this week, OpenAI suffered a few hours where its chatbots blurted out incoherent comments, evoking the word salad of a stroke victim or the Republican front-runner. And Google had to temporarily stop its Gemini LLM from generating images of people, because of what it called “historical inconsistencies” in how it depicted the diversity of humanity. These are disturbing portents. We’re now in the process of turning over much of our activities to these systems. If they fail, “community discussions” won’t save us.

Time Travel

Digital technology is too damn complicated, and we’re doomed to a life of bug-resolution. That was my observation 30 years ago when I wrote Insanely Great, in a passage spurred by a freezing problem I had with my Macintosh IIcx. As the Mac operating system struggled to handle a complicated ecosystem of extensions, boundary-pushing applications, and data at a scale the original had not imagined, bugs appeared that required Sherlock Holmes–level sleuthing to resolve.

This was the background to my Macintosh troubles: the computer had become more complicated than anyone had imagined. I enacted a short-term fix, stripping the system of possible offenders. I was stepping back in time, making the Mac emulate the simpler, though less useful, computer I once had. As I wiped out Super Boomerang, Background Printing, On Location and Space Saver, I pictured myself as Astronaut Dave in 2001, determinedly yanking out the chips in the supercomputer H.A.L., with the uncomfortable feeling that I was deconstructing a personality. When I finished my Macintosh IIcx was not so atavistic as to sing “Daisy,” but it was, in a Mac sense, no longer itself. On the other hand, it no longer hung.

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Steven Levy

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February 23, 2024